Ever After: A Cinderella Story
Dir: Andy Tennant
1998
*
 1998's Ever After: A Cinderella Story was sold as a classical re-envisioning of the much loved fairytale and it seemed like a good idea, an exciting challenge any writer/director. Unfortunately that writer/director was Andy Tennant. Contrary to popular belief, the story of Cinderella wasn't written by Walt Disney (to be fair, Tennant makes that much clear here but the fact still seems lost on many it seems after reading many reviews) and this is not a 'remake' of the Disney version. This is a retelling of the story or an altered version for a brain-dead audience. The story is without author, it is a folk tale, a mix of older stories with Greek and Chinese origin and first published in the 1630s. It has many versions depending on who tells it and when it was told, so it is open to change/adaptation/re-working. That fine with me but is not the point I'm disappointed about, it's the way it has been gone about that I detest. The possibilities were endless but the best Tennant seems to have come up with is a bizarre Hodge-podge of ideas from other fairytales and various different historical events and times. The set designer was obviously straight from doing Panto at Blackpool, mixing various pieces of old and new and many things that weren't even invented in the early 1500s. In fact, very little here resembles what is known about the 1500s, it's much more like the mid-1600s and here lies my point. Leonardo di Vinci was not born in the 1600s and he was also only 52 when he painted the Mona Lisa and not about 92 as he is portrayed in this film (he only lived to be 67 anyway). What the hell is Leonardo di Vinci doing in a film about Cinderella anyway? Is that the difference that is supposed to be clever and original about this version? Many a great author has combined fact and fiction - sometimes folk-law and fairytale, to create wonderful works of fantasy fiction. This isn't one of them. It is the laziest form of film making. I wonder if the cultureless Tennant even knows the difference between fairytale and fact, and anything before Cowboys was probably just Castles and Dragons to him? It is complete and utter bile, by all means let your kids watch it, fill their heads with nonsense, confuse them with historical inaccuracies and turn them into zombies. Then more films like this will be made and independent cinema can die a horrible death while Hollywood gets richer while you everyone gets dumber. The argument that 'It's just a film' doesn't really cut it anymore as the press take great joy in telling us, that most school children (and many adults) have no idea who certain historical figures are and when and where historically important events occurred. There are two types of zombie film; those about zombies and those for zombies, this is an example of the latter.

Hitch
Dir: Andy Tennant
2005
*
I honestly think Will Smith is a good actor. He has always seemed very natural on screen and in his early days as The Fresh Price of Bel-Air his physical comedy was always strong, often playing on his height and gangling limbs. I think because his character is so suave in the film, I don't think he as an actor can swap from one to the other. I realise readers that this is the point of the film but I'm not sure it suited Will Smith's abilities. I still don't see what Hollywood sees in Kevin Smith either, he brings nothing to the film. Overall I found the film to be badly written and unfunny. I still can't work out why Kevin Bisch, the writer, was named among Fade In Magazine's "100 People in Hollywood You Need to Know" in 2005 as he did nothing before and has done nothing since.